Reese and Finch must protect Max Preston, a self-made internet billionaire and playboy with a penchant for breaking rules and making enemies. Preston helped create a social networking site with his partner Brian Ogilvy, who appears to be one of his closest friends, and the pair recently made the decision to take the company public. Finch speculates that Preston's competitors might want to harm him to prevent this from happening, so Reese has to go undercover as a hedge fund manager to see if he can suss out a threat. Preston, as it turns out, doesn't stick to anything close to a schedule, and Reese and Finch have problems keeping up with his active lifestyle. Reese is forced to break his cover to get close to Preston, and he winds up saving Preston's life twice from an unknown assailant. Preston is able to deduce quite a bit about Reese and Finch based on their actions, and his natural curiosity about them disturbs Finch greatly. Unsure of where to watch for threats, Reese accompanies Preston to St. Petersburg, Russia, at his urging, hoping to lie low until the company officially goes public. While there, Preston is abducted by thugs hired by his partner, Ogilvy, who learned of his plans to leave the company and start another one of his own, with a competing technology. Ogilvy couldn't let that happen, so he decided to kill Preston. Luckily, Reese intervenes in the nick of time, saving Preston's life and bringing the people who conspired against him to justice.
In flashbacks, we get a glimpse into the partnership between Finch and Nathan Ingram. There are flashbacks to 9/11, which helped provide a stronger motivation for them to create the machine, and flashbacks to the day the machine was dismantled and moved, where the two men ended their partnership. In many ways, it mirrors the relationship between Preston and Ogilvy, with the two men ultimately going their separate ways due to ideological differences.